Gun Control -- Government Vs. People, and People Vs. Themselves: A Satire
Val finds his fun at satirizing the flaws of the political, religious, cultural, and medico-pharmaceutical paradigms.
Image by Brett Hondow from Pixabay
I have a very strict gun control policy. If there is a gun around, I want to be in control of it.
-- Clint Eastwood
Let's Politely Call Them Suggestible, Not Sheepheads
In order to make the central point of this post as clear as possible, I am going to tell this story of what happened in a small American town a few decades ago.
Allegedly, one day their sheriff made a radio announcement that the drinking water was going to taste bad for a while, because an extra chlorine had to be used due to a high reading of microbes in it.
Not long after, his telephone got flooded with complaints about the disgusting taste of water, some even mentioning people getting sick from it.
In that meantime, the technician responsible for those readouts found courage to admit that he had made a mistake -- and no extra chlorine was added at all to the town's drinking water.
Yes, people are enormously suggestible. Actually, only those with a cultivated will power to stay de-hypnotized from others' suggestive advances, also certain psychotics and those who have a mental problem with concentrating are possible exceptions -- all others are submissible to a clever manipulation.
Now, without any particular wish to brag here, I must mention that I am quite familiar with the whole science of hypnotism, brainwashing, mass-manipulation, conditioning and subliminal suggestions -- quite enough to know how incredibly suggestible people are. Once you have a true insight into all that, well, it gets almost scary.
Be it a teacher, a priest, a doctor, a politician, a salesman, a con man, even a spouse -- people are culturally conditioned to attach a lot of weight to anything those, whom they see as an authority, may say.
There is a tribal society where people believe that anyone at whom their witch doctor points a bone, must die -- and then it happens every single time. We may not be as primitive, but the manipulative tactics have evolved along with people's awareness, and enough to be effective.
With these stories I am merely priming you for a realization how gun control will never be materialized in a society where the government first made sure to keep people's existential fears turned on, with constant invention of enemies, whether foreign or domestic.
Deep down on the levels of self-preservation, which are still as raw as in those primitive people -- government enjoys an image of parental figure, as they are "protecting us, ordering us, punishing us, and mentally bribing us with a collective (family) pride with slogans of patriotism and national power".
And they keep us in a mental state of readiness for an assault from those "enemies of our free way of life".
That readiness doesn't only suggest, but commands, that we be able to defend our country -- which then means possession of guns.
Whether you have noticed it or not -- but there is no other county in the world that has as many "enemies" as this United State of America, and out of 195 countries on this planet, in only 3 of them all, gun possession is granted by their respective constitutions: in America, Mexico, and Guatemala.
Indeed, it takes a lot of national paranoia for the people to be convinced about their existential need for guns.
As a result, the gun industry has become one of the most influential lobbyists -- beside the Big Pharma and few others -- so it's a sheer illusion to expect that the government would stop catering to their greed.
(By the way, trillions have been spent on vaccines in the last two years, and only now there are some talks about producing some cheaper pills for those who get affected by the virus -- something that could have been done two years ago. But governments have to listen to those on whose shoulders lies the whole weight of economy and national prosperity).
Those non-defensive, political wars are started because of money, the gun industry heavily behind them, along with some other interest groups -- so why would they listen to some embittered families who lost their dear ones in some mass shooting.
Hence the part of the title of this post announcing "government vs. people" story.
Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay
It's not a gun control problem, It's a cultural control problem.
-- Bob Barr
Something Sickly Attractive About the Sound of a Fired Gun
For a moment, let's get to the question of how realistic is this hypothetical defending of the country with civilian guns.
Come on, folks, you can't be serious.
If the mighty America, with all its nuclear power, would ever be attacked, it wouldn't be by pistols and automatic rifles -- so that you could do something there. It would be by nuking American military facilities, by paralyzing the energy grid and logistics from satellites, by using weather controlling weaponry causing tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes -- that kind of crap.
It's all one colossal psychological war going on -- and no biggie on this planet will ever attack another biggie. Clinically, it's nothing but a collective hyperactive amygdala -- that seat of survival instinct in our primitive part of the brain.
For all practical purposes, your gun is merely as effective as a shot of brandy, giving you that extra sense of security.
That slogan: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" is just a lame excuse for keeping a gun. Well, do a little comparison between mass killings done by knife, baseball bat, any other weapons of choice -- and guns on the other side.
As we are about to see, those insane mass killers are not even all that stimulated by any other method of killing but by guns.
Even in those years while mass shooting was not as yet so "popular", it was said how in every bigger city there were at least 500 extremely dangerous psychotics walking the streets like time-bombs, waiting for something to trigger their bestial acts.
Well, for one logical estimation to be made, without guns being as easily available as spoons and forks, mass murders by knives and other means wouldn't be nearly as appealing to such deranged individuals.
You see, it's the very sound of the guns which turns them on.
Now, not to be compared to a motivation to kill, but loud, intimidating sounds are also much loved by the riders of those loud motorcycles and muscle cars. I live at a busy intersection, so every so often I hear the sound-spectacle performed by one of those poor lonely souls under that helmet demanding attention from everyone around.
So, at a red light he keeps revving his noisy machine as if telling those drivers around: Hey, you meek, spineless softies -- look here who is getting on your nerves!"
And then, as if pissed no end for having been stopped, as soon as the light turns green, he demonstratively steps on that gas for an additional roaring noise, "leaving all those softies" behind -- he, the tough, rough dude.
Those mass shooters love that noise of the gun for an extra orgasmic effect, feeling behind that rifle like a god deciding who gets to live and who gets to die.
Image by klimkin from Pixabay
I am a Texan -- my idea of gun control is hitting what you aim at and nothing else.
-- Blake Farenthold
No Gun Control to Be Seen on Horizon
To say that old slogan "Like father -- like son" -- we could almost draw a parallel between a deranged mass shooter and a president who issues an order for a bombing in a non-defensive, politically motivated war.
Those innocent civilian victims of such an attack get to be called "collateral damage", whereas they are nothing but mass murders. We can't deliberately attach labels of some "discounts on the price of human lives" whenever it comes convenient for us to play god.
Thousands of people die in political wars, and nobody is ever questioning the sanity of leaders who start those wars.
Which reminds me of a story from my English (or was it Latin) textbook in high school, about Alexander the Great capturing a pirate, at which point he asked him: "With what right do you rob the ships at the sea?
The pirate, knowing that he would be executed no matter what he said, decided to, at least, say what he saw as true. So he said: "I am doing it with the same right that you do. But I, who am doing it with a single vessel, am called a sea bandit, and you, who do it with an armada, are called an emperor."
As the story ends, Alex the Great respected the pirate's courage so much that he let him go free.
In a society where obtaining a gun is considered as such a normal item of the household as cutlery, a notion of a gun control is as good as a joke.
Again, the government's long policy of striving for a global status of a superiority inevitably creates an existential tension -- with all those who won't comply with such ambitions being labeled as "enemies".
These ambitions get fueled by the rich elite who insist on a hegemony at the global market, often resorting to political wars, which perpetuate the international tension. Then people, highly suggestible as they are, pick up that mentality from "Father-not- Uncle Sam", and guns become a necessity of survival.
And nothing will change there, all until America, by a miracle, would start seeking friends, not followers and obedient vassals. In a free world, leaders get elected, not self-imposed, and with America being only at a 13th place by standard of living, the question of qualification for a leadership also comes up.
Innocent people get massively killed by deranged individuals, but that is just a little inconvenience to all those who worship their guns.
Thus, in true sense, it's the government working against the people, by catering to the gun industry lobbyists -- and then, people are working against themselves by cherishing their guns so much, and never asking themselves why 192 other countries in the world don't need them for their own sense of security.
O.K., so much on this subject.
Being an outside casual observer I find it easy to understand why the whole fuss about gun control is bound to be swept under the carpet -- as so many times before. Until some crazy lunatic does it again, which will trigger another gun control fuss.
So many things are becoming a pattern in the United State of America -- like electing a leader who makes most people pissed, like creating fresh enemies, like creating economic crises, and let's only hope that it doesn't also stretch to creating new and new pandemics -- as soon as the Big Pharma snaps its mighty fingers.
They should watch how they do that "snapping", as the pissed masses just might "snap out" of a medical nightmare and see the truth.
In the meantime, let's just hope that those mass killings, whether by a psycho or by a military, become less and less frequent -- for guns are here to stay.
A personal note:
As an ex - drill sergeant in the army I never liked guns, despite getting a medal in all disciplines of using gun, rifle, machine-gun, and hand grenade. Learning how to kill and destroy never added anything to my stature of a human being. Killing is animalistic -- period.
© 2022 Val Karas
